Layering
by Kay Willow
Summary: There is a boy who lives in Twilight Town. Or is there?


**.layering.**

(Disclaimer: Fic was written before 358/2 Days, any information from that does not apply.)

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The gang is hanging out at the Usual Spot, and the day is usual indeed. Pence and Olette are doing some puzzle together on the low table, but Hayner thinks those sort of things are boring, and he always drags Roxas into his entertainments. They're playing darts, taking turns hurling the sharp projectiles into the board on the wall and talking about Hayner's mother, who pisses him off.

Roxas has good aim and he knows it, but he goes easy on Hayner and even lets him win sometimes. The taller boy will sulk to no end if Roxas isn't careful to let him salvage his pride with close defeats.

"And then she's like," Hayner mimics her voice, "you should take your little sister with you! To the _Usual Spot_. Yeah right! We don't come here to play dolls with our tea-sets. Except for Pence."

Pence makes an offended sound from across the room, but the other boys laugh together. Hayner punches Roxas in the arm playfully.

Roxas jerks away and a scowl takes his features. "Don't touch me," he snaps.

They stare at one another.

**"Reboot."**

"I can't believe he went out to talk to Seifer by himself, is he crazy?" Pence is saying. They're all running for the sandlot. "We _gotta_ be there to back him up."

In his mind's eye Roxas can see them, Seifer and his disciplinary committee. They're his enemies, a trio who have set themselves up against the peaceful order of things, determined to stake their claim on something they have no right to own. And as they round the corner they see the real things, laughing.

Hayner hits the ground, hard, and drops his Struggle bat. It's pure reflex for Roxas to race over and insert himself between his fallen friend and Seifer. He glares, and the older boy smirks at him.

"Something wrong?" Seifer says, taunting. "You want a piece? I'm happy to teach you your place -- _on your knees_."

There is neither hesitation nor emotion in blue eyes as Roxas propels himself forward, instinct that should have been erased summoning twin keyblades into his hands in place of a foam bat.

**"Reboot."**

Roxas pauses on the side of the road, his arms full with a bag he's carrying for Taro and kind of tired. He rests it against the shelf of a low-hanging window and leans heavily against it to keep it from falling, and looks up at the sky. It's hard work, but he'll have munny when it's over. He needs munny for Olette's birthday -- he wants to get her an umbrella that he saw in Alana's store that was brightly colored and patterned in a way that reminded him of her.

He knows that Pence and Hayner are also working on the side to gather up the cash they need. They do this every time an event comes up, none of them ever forward-thinking enough to just start working regularly so they have munny saved, and don't need to scramble by the time they need to buy gifts.

He doesn't mind, though. When they don't work regularly they get to spend more time with each other, and there's nowhere he'd rather be than surrounded by all his friends and...

Slowly, his expression eases from wistful into distant, cool lines.

"...what the hell am I thinking?"

**"Damnit, this isn't working. The original personality continues to surface in every situation, no matter how I try to manipulate it. Shut down the system -- we're going to perform a complete reinstall. I shall erase his memory and upgrade his current personality to a stronger version."**

He's given himself a headache staring at the summer homework and trying to remember what he learned in school from last year, binomials and foils and that sort of thing. To reward himself for his valiant attempt to be responsible, Roxas has gone outside to just lie on the grass in the little wooded area past Market Street. It's pleasantly cool here, so he lets his eyes slip closed and just enjoys the faint swirl of breeze over his skin.

"Roxas! Here you are, man. I've been looking for you everywhere."

He opens his eyes, blinks, turns to face Hayner. The other boy approaches with a grin and hands stuffed in his pockets.

"What are you doing all the way out by Creepfest Manor? _Tell_ me you're not taking up the mystery schtick too."

Roxas says slowly, "Who are you?"

**"What was **_**that**_**?"**

**"A minor oversight, a small error in the code. Reboot him, and I predict that we shall see a vast improvement."**

He closes the door behind him, feeling exhausted. Summer is harder work than he remembers it being. "I'm back, Mom," Roxas calls into the house, toeing off his shoes, but he gets no response. A note on the refrigerator warns him that Mom has to work late tonight.

Mom has been working late a lot recently, and Dad never did get a job where he could get home at a reasonable hour. Roxas worries about them a bit -- sometimes he thinks he'd like to have a day just for his family, but he never remembers to ask them about it.

He puts water out on the stove to boil and grabs something to make. Linguine with canned clam sauce, maybe even a little luxury. It's not the first time he's made dinner for his parents, and they can reheat it when they get home. They need the rest, he thinks. They leave at the crack of dawn and he's not often up early enough to catch them on their way out, and they rarely get home before late night. And he himself is so tired by the time he gets home that when night settles on Twilight Town, he's usually long asleep.

While the water is boiling, Roxas leans back against the counter, and slowly he frowns. When _was_ the last time he saw his parents?

**"Load from the backup. Ten minutes ago should be sufficient. I'll activate someone to make a phone call to distract him."**

**"Not a reboot this time?"**

**"No... I don't think we need to go that far. I think this version may prove to be exactly what I need."**

"I can't believe you made me come out here in the middle of the night," Roxas says, skeptical and huddling into his jacket. He would like to be irritated, but he would also like to be amused, and he'll have to wait to see what it was that made Hayner call him out to the Usual Spot when it was pitch black.

Hayner is sitting in the corner where the roof is missing, where it floods on days with poor weather, and he has a little fire going, as if they've gone out camping in the woods. He's got his jacket slung over his shoulders, and Roxas sits across from him and does the same.

The other boy says slowly, "I wanted us to hang out together. Just the two of us." He shifts. "Sometimes I feel like..."

"This sounds like something Pence would say," Roxas teases slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. "But did you have to say it at eleven at night?" He remembers when they were kids and used to sneak away from everyone, even their other friends, to play by themselves. This reminds him of those times.

"It's just that sometimes I feel like we're only pretending to be friends."

Roxas looks up, slight surprise registering in his face. Hayner is not looking at him. He's not sure where this comes from, but it makes him uneasy. "...don't be stupid. You're my best friend."

The fire crackles briefly, snapping loud in Roxas's ears. He glances at it, at the sullen flicker of flames, and adds, "There's no one else."

**"...that went better than I expected. I hadn't thought I would need to monitor the output of the other children, and yet, the constructed personality held firm."**

**"It seems cruel to me."**

**"Cruel is a weak word -- it implies that there is ever a reason not to do everything within one's power for what must be done. Now there is only one thing left to test."**

A small crowd has gathered to watch them spar: this town loves its Struggle, even unofficial practice rounds. They applaud happily as Hayner gets in a blow to the side of his head and Roxas staggers a bit, blinking to clear his vision. It doesn't hurt, but it's kind of startling.

Hayner says something he can't make out and someone laughs, so everyone laughs because of course he must have said something funny. Roxas smiles at him a bit and settles back into a ready position.

The tension deepens in the air as they swing the Struggle bats, deflecting and scoring and laughing, and somehow the crowd starts murmuring uneasily and Roxas isn't sure when it happened but it feels as if the very sky has darkened. The two boys look up, by some mutual agreement stopping in the same instant, and Roxas has a sudden thought -- a sudden memory -- the sky has grown dark like this once before, hasn't it?

And he knows that he needs to protect this place, his home.

His fingers flex, and the Kingdom Key appears in his hand. His breath hitches.

**"Rollback."**

His fingers flex, and a keyblade appears in his hand. His breath hitches.

**"Rollback."**

His fingers flex, and the air around his hand distorts, and a large object shaped like a key appears in his hand, its hilt fitted snugly to his grip. His breath hitches.

**"...excellent. The program is flawless, and compatible with the keyblade application. I shall load the backup from ten minutes ago, and we can begin Sora's restoration without needing to worry about Roxas."**

**"He doesn't seem to know what to do with the keyblade."**

**"Of course not. He's fighting on instinct, not on experience and practiced skill -- we had to take those from him, as they were too deeply ingrained to his original personality. It's better this way, at any rate. He would be dangerous if he could use his full ability. The new Roxas will pose no threat to our plans."**

**"But, what about the real Roxas?"**

**" 'Real' Roxas? My dear boy, he was never real in the first place."**

.

Roxas is a boy who lives in Twilight Town: he is fifteen, or one-and-a-half, or two days old; who can tell. He used to be a different boy, and before that, he was yet another boy. He would have called himself real... once. But the part of him that is real is tired now, because he has fought and struggled and been beaten back again and again. He is smothered beneath a thoughtful and shy young man, the boy next door that everyone would like in their neighborhood. He has forgotten stoicism, decisiveness, independence.

That part of him sleeps now, exhausted. It will not wake again in this life.

And so for now, he is fake after all.


End file.
